Hundreds of chacma baboons roam the Cape Town area, enchanting tourists and some locals, but also creating a nuisance for others. As human settlements increasingly encroach on their habitat, the region struggles to find solutions.
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00:00Sound of wind blowing.
00:08Sound of dogs barking.
00:14Sound of birds chirping.
00:21Sound of wind blowing.
00:27Sound of people talking.
00:40So what we have in Cape Town which is really unique is that Table Mountain National Park is an unfenced open access reserve.
00:48And the way that it is laid out is that it is intersected by urban areas, by roads, by farms, by homesteads, by whole developments in places.
01:00And so we get to live in this reserve, not just on the border of it all.
01:06Sound of wind blowing.
01:13Sound of birds chirping.
01:21Sound of people talking.
01:33Fences forming a barrier on the urban edge, these cost a lot of money.
01:36And they have to be there 365 days of the year.
01:40And that's a huge investment.
01:42And it's unusual for urban areas to invest in what is called a least concerned species.
01:47So globally if we think of Europe, boar are a least concerned species.
01:50And in Germany, Berlin, you have hunters who just go out and shoot the boars.
01:56That's a primarily lethal control method.
01:59So here on the tip of Africa we have a primarily non-lethal approach which is the gold standard for wildlife management.
02:07Sound of wind blowing.
02:14Sound of wind blowing.